Letter to the Editor

I recently sent a letter to the editor at Stereophile, which was published in the December issue. The letter was a response to a column by Steve Guttenberg, entitled "What if Digital Had Never Happened," that sounded a nostalgic note for the analog days of yore. Since Stereophile doesn't post letters to the editor online, I'm posting it here:

Steve Guttenberg’s thought experiment about how things could have been in a world without digital music seemed mostly an exercise in nostalgic romance. But it also was (I’m sure inadvertently) an expression of economic privilege.

Steve forgets how narrow the keyhole of music appreciation was for those without means in those analog days. The $9 LP of my youth, adjusted for inflation, would be $20 today. At those rates, the average American music fan would be lucky to afford a dozen new albums each year. In most other countries, citizens could afford far fewer than that. And while FM radio would presumably fill some of the gap, the FM radio of our youths was never very diverse, nor was it easy for artists without a major label to get any airtime.

Today, free, ad-supported services like Spotify and YouTube let music fans explore the wide diversity our musical heritage, past, present and future. (Plus, those ad-supported services actually pay royalties for playing recordings, something FM radio has never done.) And, for those fortunate enough to be able to afford it, $10 a month eliminates the ads altogether and offers up the full diversity of our collective musical history, something that the analog age never gave us.

One other interesting note: the last time I had a letter to the editor published in Stereophile (this one is available online) was in 2013, and it was also a response to Steve Guttenberg!